Victoria ruling the AFL, but for how much longer?

 
Adrian Musolino Columnist

By , 4 Jul 2011 Adrian Musolino is a Roar Expert

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Essendon's Alwyn Davey, Ben Howlett and Jake Melksham celebrate their team's win after the AFL Round 15 match between the Essendon Bombers and the Geelong Cats

Essendon's Alwyn Davey, Ben Howlett and Jake Melksham celebrate their team's win after the AFL Round 15 match between the Essendon Bombers and the Geelong Cats at Etihad Stadium, Melbourne. Slattery Media Group.

There’s cause for optimism at AFL House, particularly coming off a round in which Collingwood, Carlton and Essendon – the traditional Melbourne powerhouses – enjoyed euphoric wins in front of big crowds at home.

With Collingwood, Geelong, Hawthorn and Carlton top four contenders, followed by Western Bulldogs, St Kilda, Essendon, North Melbourne and Melbourne in a gaggle hunting for a finals berth, things are looking well for the Victorian/VFL contingent.

Only the two Western Australian clubs seem to be providing much resistance.

Having its core of Victorian teams healthy and happy is an ongoing concern for the AFL – and, arguably, should be just as much of a concern long-term as the wellbeing of the expansion clubs.

After all, clubs such as Greater Western Sydney Giants, Gold Coast Suns, Brisbane Lions et al have exclusivity in Aussie Rules terms in their respective markets.

Melbourne teams don’t, particularly as the generations pass. The VFL demarcations erode and market forces truly pressure the clubs operating in such close quarters; representing suburbs in a national competition.

In the coming decades, the question of whether the national competition can sustain 10 Victorian-based (nine Melbourne) teams will inevitably be asked, particularly as their rivals outside of Victoria cement themselves in their markets and grow into stronger and more financially well-off clubs.

Other codes will also impinge within the Victorian market – Melbourne Rebels, Heart, Victory and Storm still relatively new entities when compared to the AFL clubs.

The Victorian question could ultimately hold the key to future AFL expansion. When the GWS Giants enter the competition next season, the AFL would, it seems, be set for the foreseeable future with a balanced 18-team competition – two teams each in Western Australia, South Australia, Queensland and New South Wales, in addition to its 10-team VFL core. But the AFL may not stop there.

“If anybody had thought 21 years ago what the AFL looked like today, they would have been delusional and kidding themselves,” Andrew Demetriou told the Herald Sun.

“Therefore, you’d hope in the next 21 years we’ve got the same 18 teams and if anything is going to happen, there will be more teams because that seems to be the pattern.

“The places that come to mind are Tasmania, northern Queensland and northern WA. And quite frankly, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility as the world gets smaller that you could have a team based abroad. New Zealand or South Africa would be a chance.”

Let’s put aside the international expansion suggestion for another column (coming soon) and focus on matters closer to home. The AFL’s hesitancy to expand into Tasmania and Darwin (Northern Territory) comes down to simple economics.

Second teams in Queensland and New South Wales could help unlock the last two of the big five markets with sole club representatives – a weekly presence in the five key television markets. Spreading the game’s gospel into foreign territories simply underpinned this justification.

The football heritage in Tasmania and Northern Territory didn’t matter; their relative market share did. Also, these fringe options remain relocation options for any clubs squeezed out of Victoria.

As we’ve seen, if North Melbourne, for example, having struggled on the breadline for a number of years now, cannot survive in Melbourne, an increased presence and possible eventual relocation to Tassie makes sense. So, why start a Tassie franchise from scratch and close off that possibility?

Once the Giants culminate this most recent expansion phase in 2012, the AFL could well look to its options for further growth – international or otherwise.

But before it does so it needs to look in its own backyard and determine: which Victorian clubs are the most vulnerable? How will the future growth of wider Melbourne impact these clubs? Is that growth enough to sustain them all long-term? And how can they develop a relocation strategy without too much bloodshed and tears?

Some of those questions cannot be answered just yet, but not forgetting about the Victorian question at a time when the focus is on the likes of western Sydney and the Gold Coast is a necessity.

The lessons from the messy, mooted mergers of the eighties and nineties and the more recent relocation debates need to be remembered.

Fitzroy were at one time or another linked with merging with Melbourne, North Melbourne, Hawthorn and Sydney before eventually finding a new home in Brisbane (Fitzroy diehards will disagree that the true Lions spirit is living in Brisbane).

It was a messy and ugly process, but one that was needed to shed a team and open up the competition to further markets.

With promotion and relocation highly unlikely and a conference system opening up its own can of worms, staying at 18 clubs yet continuing to increase the national footprint could come down to Victorian clubs relocating – shipped off to Tassie, Darwin, Townsville or elsewhere.

Are we witnessing the last golden era for the Victorian-based clubs as a group, before the pressure of fighting for their share of Melbourne and the continued rise of multiple interstate opposition wears their numbers down?

It may sound like an exaggeration at present, but this is the long-term dilemma of a competition with state roots (VFL) that is morphing into a truly national competition.

Follow Adrian on twitter @AdrianMusolino

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